


Old-Fashioned

by LJC



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-20 00:41:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17012256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LJC/pseuds/LJC
Summary: Frank brought her flowers.





	Old-Fashioned

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DigitalMeowMix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DigitalMeowMix/gifts).



Frank brought her flowers.

He'd picked the white roses for purely practical reasons—because they would be easy to spot at a distance. He wouldn't even have to use his scope; just look for the splash of white against the dark brick exterior of Karen's new apartment building.

It had all seemed so practical and simple. Tradecraft, and nothing else. He'd done his homework, scouting the AO like it was any other mission. Her bedroom window was close enough to the fire escape that he could see inside, but not so close that just any mook could break in without taking a blind leap, or inching their way across five feet of crumbling masonry to her window ledge.

He'd kept tabs on her, even if he only saw her from a distance. Frank Castle was supposed to be dead, and Pete Castiglione wasn't supposed to have any ties in New York. Pete Castiglione was supposed to only know her name from headlines. Pete Castiglione worked 16 hour days on job sites, walked to and from his shitty SRO instead of taking the subway, and tried to keep his hands clean and his head down.

But the truth was that when Frank Castle had returned to New York, first thing he'd done was make sure Karen was safe. Learned her routine. Make sure nothing touched her. Prayed every damned day that nothing would.

(Not on his watch. Never again.)

He knew exactly what time she usually left for work (early), what time she usually came home (late). He knew where she stopped for coffee on those days when she needed something other than the crap in the breakroom at the Bulletin, and which bodega on her way home she would duck into to grab a sub for dinner when she needed fuel and had neither the time nor the desire to cook. He knew which all-night diner became her second office when she was buried neck deep in a story she cared about, notebooks spread out across the scuffed surface of a booth all the way at the back with sight lines on both entrances. And he knew that some nights she crashed on the couch in her editor's office because there was no point going home only to shower, change, and come right back. He used the scope then, from a rooftop two streets over. Even when Ellison pulled the cheap as shit blinds, he could still make out her silhouette.

Frank knew that every few weeks she met the hippy lawyer (his lawyer, a voice in the back of his head reminds him) for drinks at a dive bar around the corner from their shuttered offices. Guy had got a new suit and a haircut, but the grin that splits his face when he sees Karen never changes.

The plaque that marked the location of the Nelson & Murdock office that he never actually set foot in is gone from the exterior of the building. On bad days, Frank felt shitty about that. He hadn't cared how he'd tanked his own trial on purpose, when all he'd wanted was to lose himself in the comforting red haze of pain and retribution. But in the months since, it had felt like a debt he'd never truly repaid, even after he'd saved Red's life on that rooftop.

He wondered sometimes what would have happened if Karen had never walked into that hospital room. Sometimes he would chase that thought around as he sat on the edge of stacks of cinder blocks and ate his shitty home-made lunches. Sometimes he pictured her with the life he'd had and lost—house on a tree-lined street, baby balanced on her hip. She and Red had something going, but he'd been part of why it fell apart.

(Sometimes he thought about how much safer she'd have been, a paralegal in Hell's Kitchen who'd never heard the name Frank Castle. Other times he admitted it didn't matter where she was, or what she did from nine to five. Karen Page would always be in someone's crosshairs, because she was like a goddamned pitbull going after the truth no matter what. Anyone who loved her needed to accept that and get the hell out of her way.)

Once or twice Frank had seen "For Rent" signs stuck against the glass, facing outward to the street to fade as no-one in the Kitchen could afford what the owner was charging. There was an insurance office there for what feels like all of five minutes, and a title company until the cops busted the owners. Then a new "For Rent" sign went back in the window, all the colours fading to the same pale blue as the summer wore on.

The periods between those meetings with Nelson got longer, until Frank couldn't actually remember the last time she'd walked through the door of the crappy local. Once or twice she met up with Red, have coffee or a meal. But though she always greeted him warmly, both of them always went home alone.

(He'd told her once to use two hands, and never let go. But whether she let go of him, or he let go of her. Either way, whatever there was between them, it was just friendship now. And Frank felt bad about that, too, on bad days.)

Sometimes Frank wondered if her ex-bosses and her editor were the only people she actually knows in New York. Near as he can tell, she never went out with anyone from her office for drinks after work, or out to the movies with friends on a grey Sunday.

Karen Page slid through crowds of New Yorkers like a ghost, or maybe a blade. Not even a ripple to mark her passing. But to him, she would always be a beacon. He could spot her unbound blonde hair in a crowd, recognise her gait. The way she held herself when she was still, and the way she moved the rest of the time. Quickly, with purpose, like she means business. Frank can appreciate the fact that she wears flats she can run in, even if he hopes she never has to, and how she loops her arm through her purse handles as well as wearing it cross-body so it's almost impossible to snatch.

Karen's routines were dangerous, if anyone other than Frank Castle had taken the time to learn them. Maybe he'd tell her that. From what he knew about her, from that brief period when they saw one another every day and stripped parts of themselves completely bare, no bullshit, no lies, he figured she'd probably rather know. She'd learn how to spot and shake a tail, vary her routes in and out, if it meant survival. She'd listen, and nod, and then it would be a hell of a lot harder to track her. But for now, he relied on that routine, so he just parked himself directly in her path between the subway and her front door, and waited.

This cold, windy morning he hadn't had to wait long. He recognised the sound of her shoes on the pavement, and barely glanced up as he wrapped the wool Army surplus blanket tighter around his shoulders.

"Hey, lady. I'm real hungry. You got any change? Please?"

The crumpled bills she pressed into his hand surprised him, though it shouldn't. Most folks either walk on by like they never heard or saw a thing. Or they go through their pockets for spare change, drop a handful into a plastic cup. Not Karen Page. She actually forked over enough for a decent meal at any or diner in the city, or a fifth of 80 proof oblivion, with no judgement.

She froze, her back still turned to him, when he called her by her name.

At some point over the last six months, she had gone from ma'am to Karen. Her name should feel awkward in his mouth. It should bother him that it doesn't. Uncomfortable, accepting her invitation into a home he had no right to step into. But God, standing there and feeling the slightly warped hardwood floor solid beneath his feet... it was easy as breathing when she handed him a cold beer.

The third storey walk-up over a dry cleaner wasn't much, but at least this place didn't have any bullet holes in the plaster walls (yet). It was smaller, compared to the last place. And it should have felt cramped, overcrowded with furniture, with low ceilings and almost no natural light except from the bedroom window. But Karen filled up the space, almost overwhelming his senses.

A single framed photo remained displayed on the top of her dresser, which served double-duty as a TV stand. The others were crowded atop a battered industrial map cabinet, fighting for space in the shadow cast by the cupboard that hung above it. Half the furniture was solid, unfinished pine, in startling contrast to the rest, which is mostly cheap stuff from IKEA. He even recognised one of her lamps from Lisa's bedroom before he shoved that thought as far down as he can. Her couch was an overstuffed loveseat barely big enough for one person, and she tossed her coat over the back of it in a way that made him think she never had company.

"And all you got's a name?" she asked, her blue eyes wary as he laid out the problem.

"He said something about us both being dead men, right? About... me not being the only ghost in New York."

He hadn't thought about what white roses meant. Not until he sees Karen's face, as she nodded.

The whiskey bottle she kept on the counter was opened, but only down a couple of doubles, maybe. Nowhere near the bottom yet. Maybe the empties beneath her sink would tell a different story. But Frank wasn't here to peek into all the private corners of her life. It was none of his business.

(Just like it hadn't been his business when his SRO in Greenpoint shook like a damn train was going through it, and the voice on the radio said it had been a shallow Earthquake—as opposed to killer robots or aliens, which once would have been the kind of comic book shit Junior would have raved about, while Lisa would have shook her head, so much older and so much wiser at ten years old.

A few days later, Midland Circle collapsed, and the tower lights on the Empire State were lit up in red. One of the vets in Curtis' group was a first responder, and no matter what the official line was, seven people had gone in and only six people had come out. And what the cops weren't telling nobody was that one of those people had been the Devil of Hell's Kitchen.

If Karen Page had some empties under her kitchen sink, then she damned well deserved them.)

Her blue eyes were wet, as she looked up at him, her throat working hard. She looked tired, and unhappy. Resigned to a role she hadn't wanted in the first place, and he felt like a shitbag for forcing her into it. His mouth tasted sour, and not just from the single swallow of beer. But he has nowhere else to go. He can't do this alone, and the only person in the world he trusts more than Karen is Curtis. But Curtis can't do the shit she can do. Dig through all the bullshit to find gold.

He needs her.

(He's missed her.)

He turns to zip the backpack back up, swallowing the sour taste of self-loathing. Karen shouldn't be able to blindside him like she does. His drill sergeant would have given him so much shit for that, except he'd put a bullet in his drill sergeant's head and she'd told him he was dead to her.

"Thanks, Karen. Thanks for the beer. You know, hey..."

Her arms went around him and she held on tight he buried his face in her shoulder and just breathed.

"It's just really good to see you," she said, like it explained everything. Like it was an apology.

(She has nothing to apologise for.)

He can't remember the last time everything inside him had gone quiet, and instead of seeing his family's bodies as he closes his eyes, all he can see is her face. He can feel the pressure of each of her fingers through layers of clothing. Her thumb sweeps back and forth over his shoulder blade as he finds himself swaying gently. As if they're dancing to silence.

Don't let go, he thinks. But then he does. Because he has to.

(White roses are for the dead. For funerals. For endings.

Maria had told him that, when they were talking about their wedding. She would wear her mother's damned white meringue nightmare of a dress like a fucking Barbie doll, and she would marry him at St Michael's even though she hadn't set foot in a Catholic Church since her First Communion. But no white roses.

He hadn't understood, then. He understood all too well, now.)

* * *

Frank brought her flowers.

Any time he royally screwed up—forgot an important anniversary, was late for dinner, dropped an F-bomb where the kids could hear it—he would get Maria flowers. It got to the point where the florist closest to Lisa's school would make a sympathetic face every time he'd look up when the bell chimed, and he saw Frank. Usually wearing some sheepish, hangdog look. Maria was the love of his life, but that didn't mean she wouldn't let him have it when he fucked up.

Frank didn't really think Sarah was the type to rag him about it, not the way Maria would have gone to town on him. But he remembered the look on Leo's smiling, open face when she'd issued the invitation. And he knew that whether he'd intended to or not, he'd fucked up. Didn't matter that he hadn't meant to. That he'd been fucked up and delirious from the arrow Gunner put in his shoulder, right above the scar from the round he took to the chest on his second deployment.

He'd stood Sarah up. Didn't even call, to tell her he was gonna be outta town and not to wait on him or anything. He should have at least called (and he'd been real tempted to, after David sat there in the passenger seat with his giant home-made roast beef sub). But he hadn't.

Instead, he'd let David's girls down.

His old man always told him, "Don't matter what the argument is, cos it's always the same. Your girl's always right, and you're always wrong. Learn that lesson quick, and you'll have what your mother and I had."

Frank thought that the fifty years of wedded bliss his dad claimed to have had probably involved more than a few nights on the sofa, or holidays ending with a trip to the ER for stitches. But both his folks were gone before their first grandchild was born. So what did he know?

Being around Lieberman's family was like a drug. It could never replace what he's lost, but it reminded him that he used to be a father. A husband. A man, not just a loaded weapon. And he wants to be that man again so much it hurts. Hurts him so bad, like he's been beat all to shit, and before the bruises can heal, the blows just keep coming every day he wakes up to remember what he's lost.

Frank's not an idiot. He knows that when Sarah looked at him, she doesn't see him.

She sees a year of her bed being too goddam big. Of having to stop for gas on Monday morning, because she forgot to top off the tank. Of her son's sullen silences and sudden bursts of violence. Her daughter's attempts to be a buffer between them, taking on more and more responsibility, trying to hold their family together with hands that are too small to do the job.

Carrying that burden alone was crushing her. So Sarah drinks too much wine and waits to cry until she's sure her kids are already asleep. And she invited Frank for dinner not out of awkwardness, but a hunger for someone else to take half the load off her shoulders, just for a few hours.

Frank gets it. He knows. He feels it, and the part of him that lets himself be weak around her, be that little bit selfish. Pretend for an minute, an hour that he is still a goddam human being. That part of him makes him hesitate. Accept that second glass of wine. Be that asshole.

She'd had too much wine. She'd been drinking before he showed up, and he should have said no when she offered him a glass. But he was weak. So goddamn weak. When Sarah kissed him, he responded by instinct. His hands tighten on her hips, his mouth moving against hers for just a second too long before it hits him like a sledgehammer blow to the chest.

He stepped out of her embrace awkwardly, and not just because he knows her husband was very likely watching his wife kiss another man; have what he cannot have, do what he can't do.

Frank stepped back because he knows that he is not the man really she wants. She's so touch-starved, so achingly lonely, and shit, so is he. He hasn't been with a woman since Maria.

(Karen's arms around him. Holding him like he's her lifeline. They swayed back and forth, like they were dancing to silent music. And him drinking in that feeling, trying to pretend it doesn't hurt when she lets go. When he lets her go.)

The horror on Sarah's face when she realised what she—they—are doing is another kick in the teeth.

"Sarah, look, um." He tips his head to meet her eyes, and he can already see the wet sheen of tears starting to form. "I'm flattered, you know? I am, but I can't..."

"Can this—can this not be weird?" she asks, and there's this little edge of desperation that just kills him. "I think I just... I had a moment. It's that damn rosé."

"Yeah. No, that is some strong shit."

"Right?" She covers it with a brittle laugh, like she's not dying inside. But he knows that sick feeling. Like she's betraying David. Betraying her children.

(Karen's arms around him, and she's so different from his girl. Tall and thin but strong and tough, but she's not Maria. He shouldn't want what he wants. Jesus, he is such a hypocrite.)

She opens her mouth to say—something. Apologise again. Ask him to forgive her, maybe. As if she's the one who is to blame. He just waves her off with a tight smile, and then gently touches her arm.

"I'll see you around."

"Okay."

"Thank you."

"Oh, don't forget your enchiladas."

She tossed him the Tupperware, and he caught it. It was another moment of deja-vu. Their lives overlapping in a casually familiar gesture. How many times had Maria tossed him something—car keys, a bagged lunch, probably a plastic container full of leftovers just like this—and he caught it without missing a beat? Thousands. Tens of thousands.

But the easy familiarity that he hasn't earned—that is just an echo—makes the ache in his chest that much sharper.

"Thank you."

He pulled the car off to the side of the road, and stared at the tree-lined streets that were alien yet so familiar. A little more upscale than the home he'd burned to the ground six months ago. NSA analyst probably paid a lot better than an O-1. But if he closed his eyes, he could hear the shouts and laughter of kids getting home from school. Dogs barking behind chain-link fences. Birds singing in the nearly-bare branches. Somewhere a cheap metal storm door slammed, and Frank rested his head against the steering wheel, breath coming in sudden gasps.

How many times had he heard the screen door slam shut behind Maria, and promised her he'd fix the stupid door closer? Fifteen bucks at the hardware store, and maybe twenty minutes would have been all he'd needed, but for some reason he never got around to it.

Sarah didn't know that it wasn't going to be like this—alone with two kids and a mortgage, pinning on a name tag each day to work some dead-end job so she can keep food on the table. He knows that, and he can't tell her. And the wine turns sour in his stomach, because he knows that just for that split second, it hadn't mattered.

He licked his lips—tasted wine and waxy traces of her lipstick. That moment—only a handful of seconds—was stuck on a loop inside his stupid brain. The way it had felt. Sarah's breath warm against his cheek. Her hand on his face.

(Maria's blood hot on his face, shock and surprise stretching that second out into hours. Days. Her hair a mess of blood and brain matter.)

He slammed his fist against the steering wheel until the pain brings him back into focus. He shouldn't have had the wine. He should have left after he plugged the router back in. He shouldn't want this family-by-proxy. Not when he failed his own. Not when they were dead because of him.

Sarah said he was the second man she's kissed in fifteen years, and fuck if he's not the exact same. He'd met Maria and that was it. He'd never even looked at another woman the entire time they were together. He didn't dare. The guys in his unit used to razz him about it all the damned time, how he straight up refused to even think about fucking around on his wife. All the stupid shit that guys said, about it not mattering, how their wives would understand, it was all bullshit and they'd known it. All those years overseas, all those deployments, he'd never even been tempted. Because he knew what waited for him at home was precious, and he didn't want to fuck it up.

Jesus, he's just as lonely, just as fucked up by it. More. He knows, because for half a year when he thought he'd finished the job—he'd been hollow. Those six months when Pete Castiglione punched a clock and showed up at Curt's once a week to not talk and pretend not to listen had just been him marking time. Treading water. He hadn't found peace, or closure, or whatever the fuck he'd hoped to find once they were all dead. Maybe because the job had been unfinished, and he'd known that somewhere in the back of his head.

Or maybe because he was too much of a coward to eat his goddam gun. End the pain, and the loneliness. It wasn't as if he hadn't spent months thinking about it. But instead he clung like a wretched survivor to the hope that something, somehow would change. That he would wake up from the never-ending nightmare of grief and pain.

But the difference was, Sarah's husband was still out there. Watching over his family as best he could from the basement of a condemned power station. If he finishes the job this time, if he does it right, then David Lieberman goes back to his family like he'd never left. And Frank...

Well, Frank assumes he'll either be back in Ryker's, or dead. That was fine by him.

* * *

Frank brought her flowers.

Peonies were always Maria's favourite. She said they'd grown in the postage-sized backyard of the house she'd grown up in. She'd told him, the first time he'd brought her hothouse roses from the florist section of some big chain grocery store. She'd put the sad, scentless and thornless roses into a vase, while telling him all about how her mom's peonies had been the size of a baby's head, with petals ranging from the deepest fuchsia to a pink so pale it was almost white.

After that, he'd never forgot. Even if he'd have to scour all five boroughs to find them. It was worth it, to see his old lady smile at him the way she would smile when he brought her peonies.

The bunch he'd brought tonight weren't big as a baby's head, but they were the best he could come up with. Until his hair and beard grew back out, it still wasn't a great idea for Pete Castiglione to be spotted around town wearing Frank Castle's ugly mug, what with it plastered all over the TV ever since he'd been caught by a police dash cam in Queens. The ball cap and hoodie weren't enough anymore, and he knew it. But he had to, because she didn't deserve any less.

(She didn't deserve to die, to watch her children die, all because she married the wrong asshole. She deserved better than that.)

The pink petals were in stark contrast to the dark grey marble headstone. So bright they almost seemed to vibrate. The grass was almost completely brown, and the ground was already hard from the cold. Frank could smell snow. The kind that arrived in the dead of night and was melted by noon, reminding all the good people of New York to stock up on salt for their sidewalks and porch stairs. Switch to snow tyres. It was cold enough that the people who lived on tree-lined streets in houses just nice enough to have real fireplaces in their living rooms would get cords of wood delivered. They would be stacked up against the side of the house under a tarp, or stored in the garage, and maybe on Sunday nights the crisp, cold air would smell of woodsmoke.

It reminded him too much of another cold night in another graveyard. He'd never expected to survive after he'd killed the Kitchen Irish. Pouring out his story to Red that night, he'd only done that because he'd expected to bleed out. To at least die in the Brooklyn cemetery his family were buried. It's what he wanted, but waking up in Metro-General in cuffs reminded him that he knew he didn't deserve such a kindness.

Not when there was still work to be done.

Frank laid the still-wrapped flowers against the headstone Curt and Billy had paid for, and sank back on his heels.

"Sorry it took so long for me to finally get my ass out here," Frank said to the stillness and the chill. "Guess I felt like I didn't deserve it. Not yet. Not 'til I'd put every one of those bastards in the ground. Which is a fucked up way of looking at it..." He trailed off, tracing the engraved letters of her name in the stone.

"All but one," he said softly. "I wanted to. For my girls, for Frank Jr. God, Maria, I wanted to so bad. All the others—the Kitchen Irish, the cartel, the bikers. Fucking Schoonover. They didn't mean shit. They were just bullets in that one-eyed asshole's gun, and him I ended. Jesus, I wasn't anybody you'd have recognised. Nobody I'd ever want you to see, when I bashed his head in. But Billy. He was family. He was part of our—" he couldn't force the words past the tightness in his chest.

Bowing his head, he sucked in the crisp air, heavy with the scent of earth and the clean green smell that hothouse flowers had in place of perfume.

"I didn't expect to walk away. I knew I was going back to Ryker's. That I was going right back to counting the hours until Fisk took a run at me again, or some asshole shanks me in the showers. I could have, I wanted to. But I let him live. I'm so sorry, baby. I'm so sorry."

He wiped his eyes on his sleeve. "Anyway, Homeland couldn't publicly hang me out to dry, not without the CIA getting dragged through it. So that was that. Frank Castle says dead, and Pete Castiglione goes back to... I don't know if you could call it a life. Maybe start fresh. Maybe."  
  
The plastic around the bouquet crinkled as he tried to fix it in place, tucking the green tissue paper in neatly. No-one had put flowers on his grave, but that was fine by him.

He wasn't dead.

(Yet.)

  
* * *

Frank didn't bring her flowers.

When he knocked on her door, his hands were empty. The worst of the bruises from the carousel had finally faded, and the new skin itched on his forehead where they'd taken out the stitches.

He hadn't intended to see Karen again.

He still scanned the front page of the Bulletin every morning with a mixture of dread and hope that he can't (won't) name. Stopped on the end of her block, absently scanning the windows of her building. He tells himself he's not looking for that flash of white against the red bricks. A better man would have wanted to leave her in peace, allow her to build her life without him anywhere near it, in the hopes she would have a life.

(Frank wished he were a better man.)

He shoved his hands deep in his pockets and was two seconds away from losing his nerve when he hears movement inside.

Longest goddam ten seconds of his life.

He heard her standing on the other side of the door, knew she was staring at him through the peephole. If she were smart, she'd have that hand-cannon of hers in her hand. But when the doors swings inward, her hands were empty.

"Hey, Karen," he said, and she gave him that crooked half-smile, blue eyes bright despite the ghost of dark circles beneath her eyes.

"Hey, Frank." Karen opened her door wide, and he followed her through the narrow hallway into her dimly lit living room. She had the windows open, and he could hear voices from the street below, and distant music from the apartment above.

Her TV was on, but muted. The captions crawled across the bottom one letter at a time, lagging behind the images. He realises she's scrubbed clean, and wearing yoga pants and a loose tee-shirt, empty plate resting on the arm of the chair. It was later than he'd thought.

He wasn't exactly sure what he'd been expecting, but Karen pivoting on a goddam dime and catching him in a hug—again—wasn't it.

He still felt like his body was one big bruise, but he welcomed the pain as her arms tightened around him. It wasn't like the elevator. It wasn't the bone deep ache of something he was too chickenshit to label. It wasn't the same tidal wave of relief that nearly knocked him off his feet when the smoke cleared and he'd seen she was battered and bleeding, but alive. Alive and safe.

"Goddammit, Frank. You couldn't pick up a phone?" Her voice was muffled by his hoodie. He winced. Karen didn't dance around shit, that was for sure.

"I figured maybe you were better off, you know? better off with Frank Castle dead. After all I put you through—everything I keep putting you through."

She didn't—quite—roll her eyes. "Don't be an asshole," she said as she reached into the fridge.

He didn't say anything, just took the bottle of beer in her outstretched hand. He wrenched the cap off and downed half of it before he could bring himself to meet her eyes.

"I deserved that," he admitted, and the dark clouds lifted a bit.

"Madani really cut you lose?" Karen asks, and her tone is casual but the way her blue eyes bore into his is anything but.

"Yeah. Yeah, um... her bosses, actually. Didn't want the skeletons dragged out of the closet. So as long as I stay off their radar, homeland's got no beef with me. Time served."

"So now what?"

"I thought, I dunno. Maybe I'd give Pete Castiglione a chance." He shrugged and took another pull off the beer.

"So what does that look like?"

Frank shook his head, blowing out a breath. "Fuck if I know. But I figured I owe a lot of people for the, ah... second chance I've been dealt. And I don't wanna let them down, you know?"

"I know what that feels like," she said, eyes sliding away from his as she leaned back against the back of the loveseat. "So... what? You're coming to me for help with that?"

"No," he said quickly. "I mean, not like that. I don't need that Karen. The Bulletin Karen."

"But you do need something," Karen's blue eyes narrowed.

"I am shit at this," Frank said with a sigh. "It's not need—but..." He set down the beer on a stack of magazines piled on the table beside the loveseat, and she scooted over to generously allow him enough room to lean against it next to her.

"I want an after. I don't know what that would look like, or how it would work. But what I do know is I want you to be part of it."

"Shit, Frank. Are you proposing?"

"Nah. Nothing like that. But maybe... maybe we could grab coffee at that diner you like?"

"Coffee," she repeated, as if he was speaking another language. "Without anybody shooting at us."

"Hopefully."

"I dunno. That sounds like a pretty big ask."

Her shoulder bumped his, playfully. The tightness in his chest relaxed a little as she smiled around the neck of her beer bottle. He pulled his new burner out of his pocket and, as she watched, texted her. From beneath the blanket, her phone chirped.

Fishing it out, she looked at the screen. "You're asking me for coffee by text? I thought you were an old-fashioned kind of guy?"

"I am," he assured her. "Very old-fashioned. Like maybe one of these days take a girl to dinner, even, sort of old-fashioned."

"We may have to wait a while," she said, reaching up to very lightly touch his jaw. His was growing out the too-recongiseable high and tight, starting on the beard too, but for the moment it was just a few day's stubble. Barely more than five o'clock shadow. "Just until it's safe to be seen in public with Pete—Pete?" he nodded, "Pete Castle..."

"Castiglione."

"—Castiglione. But no man-bun," she said sternly.

"Got it. No hipster bun."

She rested her forehead against his shoulder, and his breath caught. It wasn't as intense as the moment in the elevator, but the closeness, the silence, was companionable. Easy. He reached down and let the back of his hand brush hers, while basking in the warmth of her body resting against his at shoulder, hip, thigh.

"Hey, Frank?"

"Yeah?"

"I just so happen to have coffee right here, in my kitchen."

She threaded her fingers through his. 


End file.
